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The Site and Significance of Charlemagne's Sepulcher in Aachen Quidditas Volume 30 Article 5 2009 Karlsgrab: The Site and Significance of Charlemagne’s Sepulcher in Aachen John F. Moffitt New Mexico State University, Emeritus Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Renaissance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Moffitt, John. F (2009) "Karlsgrab: The Site and Significance of Charlemagne’s Sepulcher in Aachen," Quidditas: Vol. 30 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol30/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quidditas by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact scholarsarchive@byu.edu, ellen_amatangelo@byu.edu. Quidditas 30 (2009) 28 Karlsgrab: The Site and Significance of Charlemagne’s Sepulcher in Aachen John F. Moffitt New Mexico State University, Emeritus The intention of what follows is to clear up one of the mysteries still surround- ing the Charles the Great, now most commonly known by his later appellation “Charlemagne.”1 Born in 742, the son of King Pepin the Short (ca. 714-768), Charlemagne ruled as king of the Franks after 768; he additionally ruled as Em- peror of the West, from 800 until his death in 814. Sources in his time presented him as an emulator and successor of Constantine the Great, and successive West- ern Emperors presented their own personae as successors of Charlemagne. In 1165, 350 years after Charlemagne’s death, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in- duced his anti-Pope, Paschal III, to canonize Charlemagne as a saint, just as the Eastern Church canonized Constantine. The actual context of Charlemagne’s canonization was, however, rather more political than spiritual.2 Posthumously Charlemagne’s life and deeds sometimes became the stuff of heroic legend.3 One of those traditional legends now raises the question of exactly where he was buried. As to the general (versus particular) location of his sepulcher, “Karlsgrab,” the early chronicles leave little doubt: the place of imperial interment was somewhere within the grounds of the royal complex at Aachen, then called Aquae grani (Fig. a). But where� As these early chronicles suggest, the place of imperial interment was most likely situated somewhere in the vicinity of the Palatine Chapel (Fig. a-2). Once that essentially topographical question of the original site of Char- lemagne’s sepulcher has been answered, then one may proceed to clarify equally the historical sources for, and the contextual signifi- cance of that particular manner of burial, and particularly one does 1 For standard biographies in English, see R. Winston, Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross (New York: Vintage, 1954); A. Barbero, Charlemagne: Father of a Continent (Berkeley: University of California Pres, 2004); M. Becher, Charlemagne (New Haven: Yale UP, 2005); for another perspective, see W. Braunfels, Karl der Große (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rohwohlt, 1991). 2 For the political machinations behind this event, see Robert Folz, “La chancellerie de Frédéric 1er et la canonisation de Charlemagne,” Le Moyen Âge, 70 (1964), 13-32. 3 For various aspects of the posthumous legend, see Robert Folz, Le souvenir et la légende de Charlemagne dans l’Empire germanique médiévale (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1950). Quidditas 30 (2009) 29 so by identifying the iconographic sources for the particular archi- tectural formal of the sepulcher. Figure a: Ground plan of the royal complex at Aachen around 814 (dotted lines show the governing grid-plan based on a module with multiples of one Carolingian foot = 33 cm). Major components: (1) the Atrium (site of the Karlsgrab); (2) Royal Chapel (Pfalz- kapelle); (3) Royal Audience Hall (Sala Regia); demolished, now the site of Aachen’s City Hall (Rathaus). The earliest record of the Emperor’s burial is the spare ac- count recorded by the Emperor’s contemporary and biographer, Einhard. As this author simply informs us (in his Vita Karoli, writ- ten between 829 and 836), Charlemagne’s corpse had been “washed and ritually prepared for burial in the usual way”—corpus more sol- lemni lotum et curatum. Einhard continues, “amidst the great lam- entations of the entire population,” the corpse was then brought to one side of the church [the Palatine Chapel, or Pfalz- kapelle] and was interred there [ecclesiae in latum et humatum est]. At first, there had been some doubt as to where he should Quidditas 30 (2009) 30 be buried, for he had given no directions about this during his lifetime. In the end, it was agreed by all that no more suitable place could be found for his interment than the basilica that he had built himself at his own expense in that town [Aachen], for the love of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in honor of His holy and ever-virgin Mother. He was buried there on the day of his death, and then a gilded arch [arcus . deaura- tus] with his portrait-statue [imagine] and an inscription was erected above the tomb [tumulus]. The inscription ran as fol- lows: “Beneath this funerary marker [conditorium] lies the body of Charles the Great, the Christian Emperor, who greatly expanded the kingdom of the Franks and reigned successfully for forty-seven years. He died when more than seventy years old in the 814th year of our Lord, in the seventh tax-year, on 28 January.”4 After this brief statement we hear no more about the en- tombed Emperor Charles the Great for many years, that is, until af- ter the liminal year of 1000. According to a trio of subsequent ac- counts, it was precisely on the feast of Pentecost in the year 1000 in the former imperial capital at Aachen that the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III (996-1002) then miraculously discovered (or “invented,” in- venit) the tomb with the enthroned corpse of his illustrious predeces- sor, the Emperor Charlemagne. Broadly viewed, the three surviv- ing accounts of the “invention” of Charlemagne’s tomb by the third Otto, his self-designated successor, belong themselves to an earlier literary convention. In one context, “invention,” the narratives most closely parallel the oft-told account of the momentous finding of the tomb of Christ. In this case, here we have a concrete link to the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, whom Charlemagne had taken as his own imperial role model. Acting upon the instructions of his mother, Saint Helena, to whom the whereabouts of the sainted site had come in a dream, Constantine then opportunely discovered (invenit) the actual tomb in Jerusalem; subsequently, he ordered to be built over it the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (Fig. b).5 4 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, in Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Char- lemagne, tr. L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), 84. 5 For some idea of the later cultural and artistic importance of the Holy Sepulcher, re- putedly “found” by St. Helena, see J. F. Moffitt, “Anastasis-Templum: ‘Subject or Non- Subject’ in an Architectural Representation by Jacopo Bellini�” Paragone, XXXIII, no. 391 (1982), 3-24 (with ample bibliography). Quidditas 30 (2009) 31 Figure b: Ground plan of the architectural complex built by Constantine at Golgotha- Calvary from 326 to 335; left is (1) the Edicule, later covered by (2) the columned Ro- tunda of the Anastasis; directly east is (3) the great atrium, or “Court before the Cross”; this contains (4) the repository of the True Cross, and (5) the small chapel sheltering the Rock of Calvary (Golgotha); and east of that (6) the immense Martyrion Basilica (north at top of the plan). As is well known, in art as well as in governance, the pat- tern of renovatio pursued by Charlemagne was deliberately modeled upon that cultural “renewal” first initiated by Constantine the Great, the first specifically “Christian Emperor.” Constantine (ruled 306- 337) was, and for all the obvious reasons, treated both as a “saint” and as the basic model for all subsequent Christian rulers by Caro- lingian and subsequent medieval authors.6 Richard Krautheimer has even specified: “all Charlemagne’s political ideas, his conception of a new Empire, and of his own status were based upon the im- age of the first Christian emperor [Constantine]. Numerous [con- temporary] documents testify to the parallel which time and again was drawn between the Carolingian house and Constantine.”7 In 772 Pope Hadrian I specifically hailed Charlemagne as the “New Constantine.” This was but the first time that the Carolingian ruler 6 Whereas Constantine was, and for all the obvious reasons, treated as a “saint” and the basic model for all subsequent Christian rulers by medieval authors, some modern schol- ars have adopted a more skeptical, even negative, position; see, for instance, M. Grant, Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times (New York: Scribner’s, 1994); see also K. Deschner, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1986), esp. chapter 5, examining the bloody career of “Saint Constantine.” 7 R. Krautheimer, “The Carolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture,” Art Bul- letin, XXIV (1942), 36. Quidditas 30 (2009) 32 would be so titled.8 Immediately after he was crowned Roman Em- peror in Rome on Christmas day, 800, by Pope Leo III, the seal of the imperial office bore this legend,Renovatio Romani Imperii. Ac- cording to François Ganshof, Charlemagne too “considered himself, as a Roman emperor, the successor to the Christian Roman emper- ors, of Constantine the Great and his heirs.”9 Another notable aspect, previously overlooked, is the sym- bolic significance of the specific date chosen by Otto III to com- mence his search for Charlemagne’s corpse, that is, Pentecost.
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